Three people are feared to have died yesterday after a light aircraft struck overhead power cables and crashed on the West Coast Main Line between Rugeley and Stafford, causing severe disruption on the railways.

The pilot was named last night as Alan Matthews, 59, from Walsall in the West Midlands, who had been flying for 19 years. His wife, Jenny, said that the family were in shock.

Police said last night that they believed three people had died in the crash. Mr Matthews’s family said they believed he had arranged to go flying with a work colleague and possibly another person.

The aircraft, thought to be a Piper Cherokee, came down in a field between two branches of the track at Little Haywood, near Stafford, shortly before noon.

Derek Higgott, 49, was working in his back garden when he saw the aircraft turn and plummet “straight down like a stunt plane”. He said: “There was a huge thud and black smoke. You could feel the vibration from it and a huge flock of birds all took off.”

Kath Wylie, 52, who lives in Colwich, near Rugeley, said that she heard a high-pitched whirring sound seconds before an “almighty crash”. “The house shook,” she said. She ran outside to see a plume of smoke.

Janet Hemmings, from Crewe, who was visiting her sister, said: “We just heard a terrible noise. It was just too low to believe it was normal. Then my husband started shouting, ‘I can see it coming down’ and we ran into the garden and saw something just drop from the sky.

“There was a plume of black smoke and you could see the power cables to the railway line had actually snapped where it had obviously landed.”

A spokesman for the West Midlands Ambulance Service said that paramedics were at the scene within three minutes but there was little that they could do.

Debris from the crash fell within a sharply confined space at Colwich Junction. Firemen put out the resulting fire with dry powder before police and railway workers could inspect the damage to the overhead cables.

Thousands of passengers, many making their journeys home at the end of the holiday festivities, were affected by delays. A spokesman for Network Rail said that it was awaiting clearance before it could start the repairs.

There was severe disruption to Virgin Trains between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool and Glasgow. About 400 passengers on two Virgin trains were stranded without power for more than two hours before a diesel locomotive was sent to haul their carriages back to Stafford.

A spokesman for Virgin Trains said that trains were being diverted via Birmingham and Wolverhampton, adding about an hour to journey times.

Passengers were told that they could use their tickets to travel with other operators or postpone their journeys.

London Midland, which runs trains from Birmingham to Liverpool and from Crewe to London Euston, suspended all services in the area. Buses carried passengers between Crewe and Rugby and Wolverhampton and Crewe. Disruption could continue today, a spokesman for London Midland said.

British Transport Police have begun an investigation into the crash.

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